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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/30058089">Lacrimosa</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/grapejiu/pseuds/grapejiu'>grapejiu</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Dreamcatcher (Korea Band)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>F/F, Happy Ending, I've no idea how to tag, Minji and Yoohyeon are royals, Short One Shot, royal au, we stan queens of the gays</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-03-15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-03-15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-15 16:55:34</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,070</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/30058089</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/grapejiu/pseuds/grapejiu</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Minji and Yoohyeon are reunited after exactly 268 days.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Kim Minji | JiU/Kim Yoohyeon</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>24</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Lacrimosa</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/wildseulgi/gifts">wildseulgi</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Sup y'all, I don't write very often but I wrote this for @wildseulgi, my hype woman who is always inspiring and motivating me to write, WHO WRITES BRILLIANT AMAZING GROUND BREAKING STORIES THAT Y'ALL SHOULD CHECK OUT IMMEDIATELY. Also just as an additional little tip, I listened to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YgDiNIOFRb8&amp;list=PLv7psG45rtk5QhcU2D99bnbserKF44DxO&amp;index=18&amp;t=870s<br/>while writing and I think it really helps set the vibe. Enjoy lol</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Like a heavy downpour on a late winter’s day, her ocean of tears had yet to cease. In her best moments it reduces to the light trickle that still finds its way through the fine closing of a concrete dam. The sobbing at last came to an end but the feeling in her gut of pure nothingness remained. Day 268 had arrived like a naive swimmer who didn’t quite have the strength yet built to outlast a flood. It drowned. Like the day before that and just as quickly as the day before that. Or maybe it wasn’t, but who could remember the constant string from day to day, completely seamless with no scarring to indicate when one day drags into the next. The current flood was helped along by the never ending supply of her collection of fine alcohol. Her surrounding built wealth felt particularly empty today. Today was a little different. The pattering of January’s latest rainstorm had calmed her in a way nothing else could. She felt lighter. She believed the rain was her own personal gift from mother nature. The only gift they couldn’t take away. A pastime they had grown fond of. It was the poignant heavy drops that played as the beautiful harmony to the ongoing melody she became all too familiar with. Minji pours another glass of the toxic liquid from the freshly opened bottle, delivered by another unfamiliar palace servant. </p><p>Finishing the glass, she hears the melody of a faint piano through the open window in the distance. She hadn’t heard this one in awhile. Did she return?</p><p>The sound was getting closer. The memories suddenly consumed her. A red plush carpet. She could feel how the fibres compressed beneath her careful steps. The sounds of mid spring with the afternoon sun beginning to hang low in the sky. The breeze blowing through the hanging branches of the now matured willow tree above them. How she shakily stalked up the clear path despite her certainty in her decision. </p><p>
  <em>“Nervous?” her mother had questioned, hushed, barely sounding over the light thud of a low heel dress slipper on the rolled out carpet and certainly not over the melodious violin filling the space. A volume like that came easily to her mother, given her mastered ability to conceal all her thoughts from those whom she did not wish to have them. “I know what i’m doing”, she answered, in an attempt to finish the thought as soon as it started. “That’s not what I asked, daughter”. She pondered before responding, “Then, yes. Though not for this moment”, she elaborated. But she had every reason to be. Kim Minji was about to put another person in the spotlight, for better or for worse. She was about to publicly proclaim a new weakness of hers. Her soon to be forever partner, Kim Yoohyeon, who looks back at her in that second and flashes an unbounded smile. Unknowing. </em>
</p><p>The music comes to an abrupt halt. Flashbacks now echoing her dreams, always ending much too soon. The quiet taunts her, daring her to make a decision. And just like how it happened all those years ago, she began to walk.</p><p>The call of silence was deafening. Carefully placing one foot in front of the other, but after some time they take over their own autonomy as her mind tries so desperately to focus through the leftover haze from the previous memory. She passes the row of wooden doors lining the corridor that now felt too big, hand lightly ghosting each mahogany architrave as if they all contain a key to their own specific memory held within this wing. <em>Their</em> wing. </p><p>It was all coming back. Her naive smile that always reached beyond her eyes so freely. But the memory suddenly shifts and in her mind’s eye, and Yoohyeons face contorts. Soon showcasing that tragic look in her eyes when she realised how the threads had tied and knotted and bundled and <em>pulled</em>. And it was her right in the middle of it all. This was usually her sign that the alcohol was leaving her bloodstream, her instinct instantly telling her to refill. One of the few moments where her mind focused was to help her find the next bottle. But Minji’s mind was crystal clear right now. Suddenly becoming aware of her surroundings once again as she’s faced with a door. A door she has become so acquainted with lately, never having the nerve to open it, only look and stare until her mind drifts. Is it time? Will she allow herself this indulgence? </p><p>Acknowledging to herself that this is the first time she has seen this door and can actually form a coherent thought, she’s convinced. She twists the handle, however no amount of alcohol can prepare her for what’s on the other side. </p><p>There she sits. Donning the same white lace she adorned on that unforgettable day. With the same concentrated look she used to wear while practicing playing the white and black keys over and over again. Each time memorising more notes than the last. Minji leans against the door frame and savours this moment like she never had before. Yoohyeon’s face was beginning to scrunch up the longer she sat silently debating with herself, fingers hovering. She had stopped playing moments earlier for a reason unknown to Minji. “You haven’t played that one in awhile”, Minji addresses her. For the first time Yoohyeon looks up. Her eyes trail a softness over Minji. “You’re here.” Her eyes relax into a pained state. Minji swears she saw this look before. “I knew you’d come,” she hesitates, “and I wasn’t sure if I wanted that”, her fingers hovering over the keys. “That’s why I stopped”, she explains, not really explaining anything at all.</p><p>But Minji can’t feel how hard her heart should be beating. She has long practiced the art of numbing her emotions ever since she was a child, growing up as a noble. But this felt different. And Minji knew something was different. She has no control here. She looks at Yoohyeon with a hard expression. Trying her best to hide the effect of the last 268 days, still not having stepped a single foot inside the room. She was fearful the closer she got to her, the deeper she’d see. But she knew ultimately she could never hide herself from Yoohyeon, she was always present. A lingering fragment of Minji’s soul, allowing her to peer into the depths of it and see her for who she was, as Minji had granted. She already knew, but this thought didn’t help unfreeze Minji. She was paralysed. </p><p>With each passing moment the look in Yoohyeon’s eyes softens, while Minji begins to feel a cold chill settle into her bones. “But i’m glad you’re here,” she speaks so lowly she almost whispers, “there’s something I need to discuss with you, Minji,” she starts. Minji threads so lightly, so slowly across the room she almost floats. However, just as she gets within comfortable distance of her only cherished lover, they’re soon interrupted by the door forcibly swinging open. “Mother? What are you doing here? You know this wing is off limits.” Minji questions, that familiar sense of power returning to her voice. Her visibly shaken mother is silent, almost walking through her. Minji is so distracted by the fact that her mother has broken into this wing without permission that she doesn’t immediately see the expression she holds. Or that she even holds one. Her eyes now are showing more emotion than Minji ever bare witness to from the queen. She looks back at Yoohyeon who now seems to be finally letting go of whatever barrier was holding back everything she was feeling. Everything she was trying to hide. Or maybe the barrier just wasn’t strong enough. The concrete dam was trying to hold on with all its might, but the slow trickle was back. Yoohyeon couldn’t hold back the first tear that escaped. Nor the next.</p><p>The room starts to spin. Her mother, the queen, had dropped to her knees and the force of her body hitting the ground had broken her dam. The flow of tears was unstoppable. “Mother what’s going on” Minji struggled to get out. She was unaware of how to deal with this kind of situation, not ever having to be the one to comfort her mother before. But the queen remained silently sobbing, as if she didn’t even hear her. Gasping for air and yet not having the ability to actually take it in. Seeing her mother so distressed, Minji looked to Yoohyeon for advice with her already raised eyebrows knitting together and mouth falling open. But that one look for Yoohyeon was enough to shatter what fragments was left of her. She wasn’t sure how she was going to explain this to Minji. </p><p>Trying to put herself back together for a moment, she manages to utter, “This is what I needed to explain. I never thought it would have to be this way, Minji, I’m sorry”, she says as if they’re in a world of their own. Suddenly it all clicks.</p><p>And when Minji learns she no longer has the ability to hold Yoohyeon’s hand, she realises <em>they are.</em></p><p>“Where am I?” Minji’s voice cracks. Everything starts to make sense now. The cold. The chills. The numbness.</p><p>“It’s ok. You’re with me now”, and then the flashbacks flood in once again. The black bottle placed on her dressing table. The unfamiliar tasting liquid. Minji should have known. How could she let herself be so exposed when she knew the threat. However Yoohyeon was already gone. How could she be here? </p><p>But Yoohyeon didn’t come to Minji. No, not quite at all. Instead Minji finally joined Yoohyeon in her eternal slumber. And despite the pain and anguish her mother was suffering right now knowing her daughter, the heir, was no longer with them, Minji finally felt at peace. She felt like the civil war that had waged within her since the day she lost Yoohyeon had ended. And she won. Yoohyeon could see the range of emotions change rapidly in Minji’s eyes, almost as if a piece of cinema played behind them. </p><p>Snippets of flashbacks played in her minds eye one after another like a reel of film had been set up with her own personal box of memories. Starting with the day she met Yoohyeon, both children echoing naive promises of ‘friends forever’ despite anything that could come between them. The word ‘forever’ lingering in her mind, constantly repeating, as their platonic love deepened and became heart shaped. Suddenly she sees Yoohyeon sitting beside her under the beautiful young willow tree they had grown fond of as a hidden meeting place. Hidden away from prying eyes as Yoohyeon carefully placed her heart in Minji’s hands while she explained just how her feelings for Minji had shifted into something more intense. She sees the relief cloud Yoohyeon’s eyes as she assures her she feels the same. She hears it again, still echoing, ‘forever’. </p><p>And then it flickers. Yoohyeon is dressed in white. The white lace dress that has haunted her memories so many times before. They’re saying their vows under the same willow tree. It’s older now, and the hanging leaves brush their shoulders when the spring breeze catches it. Yoohyeon’s eyes are smiling, trying with any means necessary to pour every last drop of love out to Minji. And as the officiator is asking if Yoohyeon takes Minji to be her lawfully wedded wife, she answers with the same familiar words, “yes, forever”. Before the memories can turn to the next event, she’s transported back to the piano room. </p><p>Suddenly everything else disappears. The room is filled with light and beautiful sunshine. She can see the willow tree. There are no more tears. No more sadness. No more war. It’s just Minji and her Yoohyeon. And as she accepts her faith, she can finally take Yoohyeon’s hand once more. She can feel again, as if Yoohyeon has opened the last door of the vault trapping her emotions. Looking into Yoohyeon’s eyes she sees the same smile she had when they married. </p><p>“It’s really going to be forever?” </p><p>“Isn’t that what I’ve been saying all these years?”, Yoohyeon answers. And Minji finally feels fulfilled as she joins her love in their forever world.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>So that happened.. if y'all wanna scream about it you can find me on twitter @grapejiu lmao</p></blockquote></div></div>
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